Growing up I was an avid Hee-Haw watcher. Not always because I wanted to be, but because my family insisted that I be.
I remember Buck and Roy and Grandpa Jones and Minnie Pearl and those big-breasted blonde chicks who bobbed up and down for no good reason in the corn field.
I think they were called the Hee-Haw Whores. Or something like that.
There was that family of freaks that sat on a sofa and talked about one thing or the other week after week, that fat lady with black hair named LuLu and the one guy whose phone number was BR-549. My Daddy still thinks that's funny and has used that number as his standard fake for as long as I can remember.
Hee-Haw had a fair amount of gospel music and bluegrass during the show each week, which suited everyone in my family. Growing up, I knew all the words to Rocky Top and The Old Ship of Zion, but only about half of the national anthem...
"Jose, can you see?"
One of the best of the Hee-Haw gospel guys was the Rev. Grady Nutt.
I actually had the opportunity to meet Grady Nutt in 1982 right before he died in a plane crash. My fiancee was interviewing him for the radio station where he worked. I wrote all the questions and then sat dutifully behind my man in my Southern Baptist dress with my North Carolina big hair while he asked them.
The good reverend complimented his interviewer after their visit together on how funny and insightful his questions were. I remember when he shook my hand thinking his were the biggest hands I'd ever seen. He was dressed impeccably and was a really nice man. He died only weeks after our interview.
Hee-Haw was more than a TV show to most of the people I knew back home. It was like sitting down each week for a visit with your relatives. That's because we heard ourselves on that show. They sounded like us, they sang the same songs we sang and at the center of all the picking and grinning, they worshipped the way we did. They were us. We were them.
And if Roy Clark and Junior Samples and String Bean and Marianne were our television cousins, Buck Owens was the favorite uncle that everyone loved most. That perpetual boyish big grin is unforgettable to this little Southern girl even after all these years.
How sad there is no Hee-Haw, no Roy Clark and no Buck Owens I can force my son to watch with me every week. It's his loss. It's everyone's loss.
They're gonna put me in the movies
They're gonna make a big star out of me
We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely
And all I have to do is act naturally
Well, I bet you I'm gonna be a big star
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
The movie's gonna make me a big star,
'Cause I can play the part so well
Well, I hope you come and see me in the movie
Then I'll know that you will plainly see
The biggest fool that ever hit the big time
And all I have to do is act naturally
We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely
Begging down upon his bended knee
I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsing
All I have to do is act naturally
Copyright © 2004-2006, Sherri Bailey
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